best school in Maryland

[Anonymous]

OP,

The Bethesda elementary school in downtown Bethesda has been known for years for its ability to work with all kinds of students. It has a wonderful ESOL program as well as a particularly competent and experienced special needs team. There is an excellent reading specialist as well.

We moved from downtown Silver Spring to downtown Bethesda to place our eldest son with learning disabilities at Bethesda ES. The speech therapist there was the best we had ever encountered and far better than all the private ones we had paid for.
The school has also done its best to accommodate my younger son, who is advanced for his age. There is an assistant in every classroom, who guides the children while the teacher leads a levelled reading or math group. Parents are involved in all kinds of cultural and educational enrichment.

Downtown Bethesda is much more culturally and slightly more economically diverse than the rest of wealthy Bethesda. It has many international families coming from all over the world (there are between 40 and 50 countries represented at school every year). Many families live in the apartments in the downtown, and others live in the (expensive) single family homes nearby. There is a significant amount of turn-over, since many international families are here for 2-4 year stints at the World Bank, etc. These families are usually extremely well-educated and care about the quality of their children's education.

Now the bad news concerning MCPS: there has been a demographic explosion in recent years, and most schools in southern Montgomery County are overcrowded. Bethesda ES completed an addition last year and it turns out it's too small for the influx of children this year. That is because of the stupidity of the predictors used by the public school system. MCPS refuses to acknowledge that high rises and condo buildings accommodate a significant number of families with school-aged children. Since there is construction in every city center of MoCo, you can see what a problem this is. Unfortunately, there are no checks and balances in this kind of system. My friend's DD goes to a school in Silver Spring where despite the 5 or so portable classrooms that have occupied the playground for years, they are not even on the waiting list for an addition.

As for Title 1 schools.
I have two friends who tried them, lured by smaller class sizes and the promise of additional resources and attention from teachers. Neither lasted long, because it became socially very awkward to make deep friendships with children who had so much less, whose families had very significant issues, where parents could not be involved in school, or for whom education was not a priority.

I hope this gives you a helpful snapshot, OP. Of course, your little corner of heaven will depend HEAVILY on your commute, house availabilities (spring season is brutal! get all your mortgage ducks in a row) and what kind of neighborhood you want.

Best of luck.

[Anonymous]

As for Title 1 schools.
I have two friends who tried them, lured by smaller class sizes and the promise of additional resources and attention from teachers. Neither lasted long, because it became socially very awkward to make deep friendships with children who had so much less, whose families had very significant issues, where parents could not be involved in school, or for whom education was not a priority.

So, I totally believe that PP's friends had this experience because I'm not in the business of telling anyone that their experience is not their experience. With that said, we've not had the same experience at a Title I school. There are other middle class families, particularly in our neighborhood, but we've also just not had the experience of families having "very significant issues" or education not being a priority. I'm sure there are families with significant issues, but nothing that has impacted our experience at the school. The issues I do see seem to be related to poverty, like some turnover in the classroom as families move from one apartment to another one in a different school zone. But...acting out, or kids witnessing violence at home and bringing that to school? I haven't seen that and I'm in the classroom/school a fair amount.

As for education being a priority, I've found that my kids' peers are under a lot of pressure to perform at a high level, as their parents often gave up a lot to come to the United States. In many cases, the parents were well educated professionals back home, but war, violent extremism, or just political shifts forced them to emigrate or seek asylum in the United States. They value education highly because they want their kids to have the same advantages that they had back home before the country fell to Al Shabaab or whatever.

So, yeah, I think it's possible to have a good experience at a Title I school. It's also possible to have a bad experience, but that's really true of any type of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We like Takoma Park schools!

There are several good options in the county. Takoma schools seem terrific. They're also diverse and inclusive which at a time of rampant hate crime at many other schools is to its credit.

The elementary schools is a focus school that is they have reduced class sizes. The STEM magnet program provides additional enrichment. Because of the size of the grades of roughly 200 children they are able to provide differentiated and enriched math and reading above and beyond most other schools.

The middle school has a GS rating of 10. It also houses one of the county's STEM middle school magnets. Presently, in boundary students have a slight advantage since a few seats are reserved.

The high-school, Blair, as someone stated in another thread, has many of the county's top performers but also has its share of low performers. This impacts its GS rating, but it also has more students admitted to top universities than any other high-school in the county according to the data published in Bethesda magazine. Blair also has about 3X the number of national merit kids than any W.

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/press/index.aspx?page=showrelease&id=4964
http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2016/The-College-Chart/index.php?cparticle=3&siarticle=2#artanc

Takoma schools are great and this particular focus school seems to be the best of all worlds.